Voyage of the convicts who became courtesans The way we were

ON March 1, 1790, a chartered British transport, the Lady Juliana, entered Table Bay with a most unusual cargo: 220 female convicts and a few children. The women were destined for the 18-month old penal colony of New South Wales, Australia, where a shortage of feminine partners had forced some male convicts to resort to homosexuality.

The females ranged in age from 10 to more than 50, with the majority (116) in their 20s. Most were serving seven-year sentences for minor offences, but 11 had been convicted for life. Many had been living aboard the Lady Juliana for six months prior to her departure from Plymouth, in the UK, in July 1789 at the start of a leisurely voyage that lasted until June the following year.

John Nicol, the steward responsible for distributing provisions, wrote: “While we lay at the Cape we had a narrow escape from destruction by fire. The carpenter allowed the pitch-pot to boil over upon the deck, and the flames rose in an alarming manner. The shrieks of the women were dreadful, and the confusion they made running about drove every one stupid. I ran to my birth [and] seized a pair of blankets to keep it down until the others drowned it with water.”

The women were well nourished and treated humanely by contemporary standards, being unshackled and allowed free access to the deck. Many had been forced into prostitution by poverty and were prepared to service the crew in return for benefits.

Nicol wrote: “When we were fairly out at sea, every man on board took a wife from among the convicts, they nothing loath.” Several babies were born of these liaisons, enriching the Australian gene pool.

Male visitors were allowed aboard to bargain with the women at each port, and a former shoplifter bought a cask of wine and sold drinks for profit. We can be fairly sure there were lively scenes at the Cape, which was the last well-established cosmopolitan outpost that most of the women would ever see.

The Lady Juliana spent a month in Table Bay, during which she took aboard 75 barrels of salvaged flour from the irreparably damaged supply ship HMS Guardian. The latter had struck an iceberg after leaving the Cape and limped back, thanks to the skill of her captain, Lieutenant Edward Riou.

Meanwhile, 73 Cape ewes and a ram were placed under the management of a competent convict shepherdess, “who was so fortunate in her charge of the flock as not to lose one”.

The women received a mixed welcome from the starving population of Sydney, who had expected a supply ship, but their misery was relieved when ships of the notoriously mismanaged Second Fleet began to arrive 18 days later.